A Simple Caress
by Tomorrow
Summary: He was different from them. Alive. Vibrant. Feeling... these inanimate beings... couldn’t even hope for such a gift, as those who lived and breathed greedily hoarded for themselves. Such a privilege as physical sensory. - That selfishness." (1xR).


AN: A new series I'm working on, set in the actual GW universe, for a change. Let me know what you think, and thanks.

Chapter 1: Unfeeling

Filth. Warped, rusted metal and sewage that dribbled from stripped-screw crevices to coat the ground in waste and putrid grime. Steel smeared with rank, muddy puddles and languorous sludge that seeped into the metal's surface, mutating it into a disgusting, alloyed brew. The air was hot and thick enough to hold the stench within the dilapidated walls, the melting pot of this soup seasoned with decay—still pungent through the corridors that reeked of spoiling flesh and the grinding of skin between rodents' teeth and tongues. All drowned by the steady patter of the rain on the sheeted roof. Drops that fell onto the soldier's shoulder, down his arm, and dripped after encircling his wrist in a wet shackle.

He could only hope that the main computer system was still functional as he sprinted down the hallway and rounded the next passage. Otherwise he would have to scatter the explosives around the base and set the detonator off manually, which would cost him more time than he initially planned. If everything progressed smoothly, he would only have to stay there another twenty minutes at best, and then he would be free to return to his duties of guarding the Vice Foreign Minister.

He grunted.

The parameters of the mission were extremely base. And yet he, Colonel Heero Yuy of the Preventers, the Vice Foreign Minister Darlian's primary bodyguard, was ordered to carryout a Recognizance assignment. He hadn't been demoted to something so remedial since he was thirteen and under the tutelage of Dr. Jay.

Although it was simply a "seek and destroy" mission for one of the over-looked Earth Sphere Alliance mobile suit storage facilities, a military task even the most inexperienced member of the Preventers could handle, Lady Une insisted that he take on the assignment himself, to be sure any "tactical subtleties" didn't escape the Preventers' "extensively detailed inspection."

He snorted.

In other words, she was too strapped for personnel to want to find a replacement for such a menial job. She knew he hated clean-ups and prioritized Relena's security, but apparently she didn't care enough about his personal preferences to put out the effort to permanently erase his name from her Recognizance list. So he was stuck doing this sort of "garbage detail" to rectify the Intelligence Department's slip-ups and oversights.

And that infuriated him.

He reached the main system, the lurid glow of the screen blanching his skin to ghostly staleness with its light, casting shadows across his cheeks and lingering on his darkened lips, finally setting in the hollows of his breast bone. A foreign specter in this wired, mechanical crypt, of warm flesh and steady, resonant breaths—not the electrical heat and automated hum these machines only knew.

He was different from them. Alive. Vibrant. _Feeling_. He could hear the whisper of an evening breeze as it whistled over his arms and teased his skin, even as a mere graze. He could waltz to the beats of symphonic interludes, as with their vibrations they hypnotized the night in a pitched trance. Could feel the intimacy of twined fingers and the caress of a lover's lips upon his own, if he so chose. Even scream from the inflicted, murderous pain of a bullet in his back. He could sense it all: pleasure and affliction, devastation coupled with gentleness and decadence; and these inanimate beings, sadly… could not. They couldn't even hope for such a gift, as those who lived and breathed greedily hoarded for themselves. Such a privilege as physical sensory.

That selfishness.

Warm, vivacious creatures… as opposed to cold, calculating instruments. It was so unfair that because they were manufactured with screws; metal; gutted with wire and labored sweat, rather than conceived of sinew; blood; and jointed bone, that they were damned to serve humanity and life as nothing more than scrap. Something to be updated or else soon forgotten at that back of a musty storage closet. And perhaps that's why they refused to honor his input commands repeatedly, because these metallic devices envied what he as human possessed and implemented without a second thought or gratuity. What they so yearned to understand.

Touch.

His fingers raced across the keyboard with eyes otherwise trained on the monitor, only to find the system corrupted from extended exposure to such a dank environment, which meant he would have to rig the computer itself, in its internal wiring, in order to onset the base's self-destruction sequence.

Another grunt.

Opening the panel, he began to search for the wires connected to the detonation and corresponding override functions, intent on splicing the wires in a way that would delay the self-destruction program long enough for him to get out of range of the blast. Since he was unable to directly program the system to automate this command, he had to initiate the sequence himself, tampering with the computer from the inside, out. He really didn't have any other option if he wanted to leave the vicinity, body intact.

Heero was almost thankful for the lighting when it cracked above him in bolted whips and flickering bursts, reflecting from the steel panels brief flashes of light over his hands as he attempted to cut through the bright red cording—illuminating his handiwork. Radiating off his fingertips in faint, pale glimmers. His face seared by the pulsating glints.

Wires were strategically cut-- And the blare of emergency sirens wailed as the last thread of copper within that rubber coding was severed. A constant, deafening screech that echoed throughout the base in shrill spurts— The sentence of inevitable death. Drenching the building in sound.

And it was at that moment, when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand erect and a once distant buzzing magnify rapidly in the depths of his mind, that Heero Yuy realized something about the wire he just cut—

And was barraged by thousands of electrical volts that spiraled down from the cloven sky. Burning him. Incinerating him with white-hot currents through his blood. Those capillary flames induced his unconscious body to jerk from the shock they brought, forcing his heart off beat. Tossing him. To leave his body tangled amidst a cage of wires, having been thrown against the system by the strike.

Lying against the machine, now as unfeeling as that engineered heap in his unconscious state, another wave of electricity shot through him… of artificial, man-made nature, however. Shorts in the system bit at his fingers and lapped around his wrists through the cuffs of ripped blue wires. Volts ran up his legs, separating at his thighs wrapped in frizzled green chains. The soldier's neck was swaddled in a wiry white lynch with the currents strangling his breath. Choking him of life. A machine's sweet, _calculated_ revenge.

Just darkness…

Taken offline...


End file.
